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I say this with all the respect on the world, good luck

I'm all for universal childhood education, but your childcare is your responsibility not society's.

Thank you for your opinion, obsolete man :)

Fun fact, education starts at birth. In the infant and one year old classrooms at daycare centers they have lesson plans and do educational activities with the babies. Things get progressively more academic from age 2. There are educational requirements for daycare centers.

I'm confused... so you are asking for universal paid for day care for kids from birth?

I'm all about universal health care, especially for children, but there already IS paid for, or heavily subsidized child care, at least in PA. https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-Works-Program.aspx

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or are you asking for socialized services because people make too much for the program? The limits are 200% the federal poverty limit, or someone making up to ~17$ an hour.

Yeah, people are living the highlife on…what, 36,000$/year?

My wife and I make too much to qualify, so instead we are private pay at 13,600 per year for 1 child. That’s more than I have made at some jobs when I was younger.

It's so out of touch it's not even funny. I'm in school, and hour household income is about 40k until I graduate, and thats assuming I can even get a job in this market.

We can barely afford rent, we can't afford food.

I could take a job making $100 even a day as soon as I graduate, 5 days a week. The cheapest childcare I've found is $500/wk, and that's just for before/after school.

Most other nations at this point provide childcare as a service, as an investment in the future.

Name checks out

Two kids in daycare. 2022 total for us was 30 grand. That doesn't count a full month they were between providers due to acquisition of Daycare 1 and waitlist for Daycare 2.

Well, you're an asshole. I have no kids but I'm still all for things like this and paying taxes for better schools because I don't want to be surrounded by morons like you. Making schools and daycare better is how you do that

I was asking if their goal is to give free to everyone, or raise the limits on the existing offerings.

I'm not arguing against it being subsidized, I just don't understand what OP is trying to do, 100% coverage means the gov't will pay exactly X amount per child up to a certain point...

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So are they trying to remove the current program and replace it, or just up the limit that people qualify for the subsidy at.

Thank you for this question— I’d agree with what people are writing below about the income limits being out of touch, and argue that PA childcare is not heavily subsidized. I meet a lot of people barely scraping by who do not qualify. I’m one of those families (two adults in FT jobs, constant employment since a teen, no major medical emergencies… and childcare is unaffordable. We aren’t living the highlife).

There’s also the question of room at quality centers. The waiting lists are incredibly long in my area. Additionally, high staff turnover is detrimental to young children’s development and higher wages and better conditions could prevent the turnover, but it’s not going to happen without a concerted effort to improve and budgets being strategically used.

I’m not going to say there aren’t a lot of things to work out, but I will say other countries (and even at the state level!) do this and it’s worth the investment on many levels (fiscal, personal).

Thanks for your q!

I'm sorry, I don't think you answered my question, are the issues the income guidelines and everything else is good?

I'll give your opinion the full consideration that it's due. If someone wants society to be responsible for the day-to-day care of their child, they should just surrender it to the State. Daycare is not education: https://1851franchise.com/lightbridgeacademy/understanding-the-difference-between-daycare-and-educational-child-care-2703161#stories

No, the issues are it needs to be affordable, accessible, and quality. That is what we want to organize to address. PA’s currently isn’t affordable or very accessible and there’s a wide spectrum of quality— your guess as to who can afford quality centers.

I want to be clear: we do not have an entire campaign and specific demands planned out yet. If you would like to be a part of that effort, Wednesday’s meeting would be a great place to start!

Lightbridge is a daycare.

The link is to a page promoting a business. It is not any sort of actual educational resource or state/government definition of what a daycare is.

Do you have a rough figure of what this program will cost and how it will be funded?

This seems like the first step in proposing a government run program.

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so you want it to be cheaper, despite the vast majority being privately owned and setting their own prices, (which are typically way above what the gov't would pay)

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Accessible but nobody wants to do the job for the same reason nobody wants to be a teacher (but for less money, more stress, less time off, limited benefits, and worse parents),

and you want it to be better quality, which means higher standards, which means more costs, which means less places offering the service

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I'm curious how much do you believe 8+ hours of child care per day should cost?

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my wife was a preschool teacher at 3 different locations, nanny, and public school teacher and we looked into opening our own. We absolutely need to address this issue, I'm just really curious what the solution is other then "Make it better, free, and everywhere"

I’ve always thought it would get more political traction if a stipend was offered for childcare that either paid for daycare or paid stay-at-home moms to care for their children. Either (or both with part-time work) is a valid choice and it feels like would appease a wider political spectrum. I just wanted to share this idea in case it hadn’t been voiced.

Exactly, my point. It's a daycare center telling you flat out that it's not the same as preschool.

I want to make sure these questions are in good faith, and respond to the ones that are. Are you interested in organizing with others for, yes, affordable, accessible, and quality care? If so, you have the information you need from my original post and other answers.

I’m a full time working parent with limited time. I’m organizing in some of my spare time with hundreds of other people. I think childcare should be free to all. We pay taxes, significant taxes, and I’d like to see those taxes work for us.

Cheers! Hope to see you in an organizing call. It takes vision and optimism to work towards something new— come aboard if that’s you.

From the link "Lightbridge Academy explains why daycare and their educational child care program are simply not the same thing."

Lightbridge is claiming they are more than a daycare.

Licenced day care centers have educational requirements to meet. There are even some that offer more intensive programs and kindergarten.

Lightbridge is a daycare.

We have heard this before! We haven’t totally defined our demands at this early stage, but this has been mentioned by others and I really appreciate feedback like this. I’ll take it back to the working group.

That has been mentioned by other parents! Someone just mentioned something similar— I’ll be sure to report back to the group. Our exact demands have not been defined yet, we’re building our base right now so that we represent more people than just a small group. …wanna join? 😉

they are in good faith as I've witnessed the industry first hand, we also got out of the industry specifically because the parents (almost always mothers) were terrible to deal with because they wanted exactly what you are demanding without any idea or plan or knowledge on how anything works.

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Good luck, the industry needs to evolve, I look forward to your solutions!

While I don’t, we have a working group working on policy and research. I know something like this was included in Build Back Better and then removed, so there has been work done on it before.

That's wrong think. You should be ashamed.

This report from the PA Department of Human Services may have some data you’d be interested in reviewing. The Office of Child Development and Early Learning is required to do a market rate survey of child care providers every three years. Keep an eye out for an updated report sometime this year.

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Would this be different from the child care expense credit that’s deducted on your income tax filing? I think they did change it recently to be non refundable but admittedly I just let hr block figure it out when I file.

Ohhh, thank you!

Do you think there is correlation between poor parenting and not being able to afford kids?

I’ll DM you!

IKR, all the poor should die in a ditch from treatable diseases if they can’t pay, no free lunches in the gReAtIsT cOuNtRy iN tEh wOrlD!

Obvious /s

Yeah, I’m interested in universal health care for all, not just children and the elderly. So not sure if this is a good stepping stone, or futile overall.

I like to think it’s a good stepping stone ✊🏼

Feel free to join r/universalchildcare to stay tuned or join the call on Wednesday. I think you’re right in that there is room for improvement all around….

I guess I am suggesting that something like that but one that is a more significant amount. For example, the child credit that paid people (it showed up in bank accounts monthly of people with direct deposit tax filings or they got it when they filed for taxes the following year) with children during Covid has expired and even just the small amount that it paid ($1-2000 I believe per child) apparently greatly reduced child poverty rates. Now that is different than a childcare focused one but it shows that just some amount more can clearly have a big impact on families.

Wow you really are a big dumb asshole. You do know that there are schools that are also businesses, right? All the way from daycare to college.

Look I picked the second website on Google and it contradicts your stupid comment. https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-Early-Learning.aspx

Great, thank you! I’m interested in potentially getting involved but things in my work and personal life are too hectic to get involved until later (maybe March?). I will definitely join the subreddit to keep up with news. As someone in education with a young child, I am very excited to see this type of effort!

Not even roughly? Is it a $1B program or 3 orders of magnitude larger a $1T program?

I have some rough numbers in my head. There are currently 23 million children between 0 and 5 years old. This does not account for the fact that full day kindergarten is not available everywhere, and even school is not full day, so it would require additional care. Let's multiply 23 by 50% to roughly account for those older children.

How much would full time care cost when funded through a state program? Probably significantly more than private daycare costs now, since there is barely any profit margin in those businesses, and there are complaints that daycare workers are nor paid living wages.

So let's say $18K per child with all overhead. That adds up to $621B annually.

There are roughly 125M households in the USA, and half of them don't pay any federal taxes. That comes out to roughly $10,000 in extra taxes per tax paying household. Every year.

No. I've seen horrible parents at all income levels. Though at both ends of the income spectrum you start to see a parental disconnect. With both extremes parents are prioritizing something over the kids, where quality time is concerned. Lower income parents miss out from necessity to work multiple jobs to pay bills. The higher income families often went away and the kids had babysitters or they were also tied up in work because they value work more.

This is just my personal opinion and feeling from working in early childhood education.

Well, I’m actually anti-universal childcare now that I’ve read this! You totally changed my mind. Thank you for enlightening me, drxdrg08 :)

I feel you! We’ll totally see you in March or beyond, and welcome aboard!

Great. Now we have another reason to tax churches, corporations and the ultra rich

If that’s how you respond to legitimate questions about how to fund this proposal I don’t think your going to get very far with this.

I'm just showing you how expensive this program might be, since you said you don't have even rough figures.

To put it into perspective, $612B is twice the size of Medicare tax collections, and those tax collections are a 12.4% tax on income.

If the goal is to expand child care to more families who can’t afford it and drive down costs, wouldn’t it make more sense to expand on the current childcare assistance programs already offered? We could allocate gov funding to give out business loans to encourage more daycare/pre-K centers. A lot of the current expense is due to crazy demand and limited capacity. I’d be willing to bet expanding access to the current means tested system and encouraging more childcare business to open would be more pragmatic and likely to succeed in regards to the goals in the current political climate compared to pushing for universal.

To be fair, OP can't respond to this because they literally have no idea what they are doing or talking about.

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I asked them what their proposal was, they don't have one. OP (based on post history) is just pissed because this issue suddenly impacts them in the last 2 - 3 months.

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They want it free, everywhere, and high quality... and nfc how to do any of htat

How much would this stipend be?

> I've seen horrible parents at all income levels.

Equally distributed?

Not sure. I’m not a political expert. Just throwing an idea out there.

Get the hell out of here. You want money so you can not work?

I’m with you

You want my tax dollars to pay a mother to be a mother?

Demands?

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Just pointing out, this was done previously to a pretty sizeable extent under the public welfare system, in the 80s/90s. The problem is who gets the money? is it based on income or family size? number of children? location? how much is the right amount?

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If its done wrong, we end up with a society problem of a heavy incentive to have more children to continue earning income while ensuring low on paper income, which means the parent must live in subsidized housing while ensuring no skill growth, no tax revenue, etc.

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If its done right, its a huge increase in costs to tax payers as we pay a "living salary" to people who aren't in the work force, and very quickly falls back into the above.

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The current choice isn't normally "I don't want to stay with my kid" its "I cannot afford it", even while making good money, so how much money would need to be paid out of the gov't budget to parents who want to stay home, and for how long? Do we just let them take an advance on their SS? New "Student Loans" that are gov't backed?....

You want people to pay extra so you can not work and you have the gall to get mad at them when they say no?

We did this before in the 80's/90's... the "Stipend to stay at home mothers" was called Welfare, they received preferential treatment in public / subsidized housing and vouchers, free food via WIC, monthly payments in cash, free medical coverage etc

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It basically failed society because instead of empowering women to have skills and gain experiences that could be marketed, they more or less became dependent to remain low income (or lose housing) and have more children to increase income.

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I'm not saying there shouldn't be a much better program then what we have now... but paying people to have kids and stay home historically has not worked well in the US

People don’t get childcare to not work :)

They are obviously in the very first stages of trying to organize around an issue that deeply affects many people in this country. Just because she doesn't have a written proposal with a budget doesn't mean they can't work towards making positive change.

Should she not reach out to people to have discourse about this just because she doesn't know all the answers yet? Childcare and it's associated costs is a huge issue and financial burden in this country that needs to be addressed and people absolutely should be trying to find effective solutions to this crisis.

Demands. You seem to be a troll, so I’ll stop answering you and others like ya for now. Have a good one.

And all other non-profits. Tax them on revenue.

95% tax on revenue like it was in the 1950's.

I don’t have kids, but I think it’s a very worthwhile cause. I wonder if there would be funding available through the Community Services Block Grant. If counties could apply and use the money to fund child care, whether via voucher or program administration, it could make a huge impact in alleviating child poverty in the state.

If this is the approach please avoid the pitfalls of federal student loans. Making funding more available allowed schools to charge more as there was no over site of cost. Highly encourage some kind of cost cap based on COL in that area (or other metric) or the benefits may be squandered to inflated costs.

Truly best of luck!

They are posting in a state forum with the first rule being "posts must be relevant to PA", recruiting people to go join non-pa subs is supposedly not supposed to be done, on a topic they have no idea what they are talking about, and trying to get people to join a call which isn't related to PA...

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so no, she shouldn't be posting it in this forum without understanding how it in any way applies to PA unless it is specific to PA, according to the rules.

I'm not at all trying to be an ass here, because I 100% believe charging parents thousands per month for childcare is predatory. But why can't the government force childcare businesses to put a reasonable cap on what they charge?

You're putting words in my mouth.

Whoa hold up. Why don't half of households pay federal taxes????

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I can't really say from a day care employee point of view. My experiences employed by a daycare were limited to one center in a predominately low income area. I covered at a center in a higher income area, but was not there long enough to get a feel for the families.

As an aside, I moonlight as a face painter. From working birthday parties and community events, yes, horrible parents are pretty equally distributed.

TBH, I see more honest family interaction when I'm face painting than I did as a daycare employee.

Edit for clarification.

Another issue I have with this is that using welfare seems to be something that is passed on from generation to generation now. So if we start paying parents to stay home with their kids, what's to stop their kids from becoming adults and having kids and just never actually entering the workforce? Nothing. I think there are better ways to help support parents.

Fully support what you are doing. The fact that the childcare tax credit was not renewed is arguably the biggest fumble of the previous congress. And as you said, childcare is literally a market failure. It needs subsidy or something.

Personnel costs have a huge impact on the overall cost of child care. According to a 2020 study about the true cost of care in PA, “Personnel costs constituted 80% of total child care costs, at the median, with a significant number of providers exceeding 70%.” The child to staff ratios in child care play a big role. For example, there’s a required ratio of 4:1 infants per staff member in the PA child care regulations. I’m not arguing for changes there (I can’t imagine caring for 2 infants on my own, let alone 4), just sharing another perspective about what can drive cost in this sector.

No. There is no state sponsored day care. That’s like blackmail. Get a job, or stay home. Have kids or not. But I am not paying you to raise your kids.

Don’t tell me. Tell the person who asked if she was going to get money.

Just someone with a job who doesn’t plan on paying for your childcare or for the other person who wants $$$$ to raise her own kids.

Because contrary to popular opinion on Reddit, the federal tax system in this country is highly progressive, and highly re-distributive.

The top 20% of income earners pay 75% of federal taxes. And roughly the bottom 50% of income earners pay no federal taxes at all.

Almost 60% of households paid no federal taxes in the last 2 tax filing cycles when the economy was going through the pandemic.

To be frank, I already pay over $4,000 per year for school taxes and obviously that amount will always gradually increase over time. It's not reasonable to expect others to just keep forking out more and more of their income for parents and kids. People without kids who are struggling financially and go without food and housing usually have an impossible time getting help from the government already. While people with kids just keep getting more help. At what point does it end?

The average cost per child in pre-k daycare is about 750 - 850 a month - lets round it up to 1k a month https://tootris.com/edu/blog/parents/child-care-cost-15080-a-year-pennsylvania-heres-the-breakdown/

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which breaks down to about 1k a month (12k / year) per child.

There must be (according to the law) no more then a 1:4 ratio of staff to children for infants, this increases to 1:5 for toddlers, and 1:6 for older toddlers... which means AT MOST, each staff person is bringing in 48k, 60k for toddlers, and 72k for Older toddlers in revenue a year caring for the very young. That is total income, assume that there needs to be a boss (who can fill in to cover days off / sick days etc), rent etc... the total income potential is terrible.

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so what would you consider a "reasonable cap"? the "several thousand a month" is either very premier "private school" level, multiple kids, or in a very high COL like NYC or Seattle/San Fran

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http://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3270/s3270.51.html&d=reduce

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They have this already based on income, the income ranges should likely be increased thought

Raising kids is a job dingus. I’d rather pay stay at home parents than most of the shit the government spends money on.

That is another society issue that was witnessed pretty heavily, but its part of the larger problem of how do we fully support parents / child care workers without destroying an industry that is essential (pre-k care), punish/lock people into a series of almost servitude to the gov't (reliance on welfare/subsidies), be fair to those who choose not to have kids..

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in other countries, its generally a "the employer must eat the cost of it". In the US that would just result in a massive reduction in hires of women who may have children as they aren't going to pay 6 months+ of wages to a parent for doing nothing to help their bottom line

Am I though? If it isn’t “society’s responsibility” to provide assistance, then what else is going to happen?

Besides, what I said is based in reality, Americans are literally dying RIGHT NOW because they can’t afford to go to the doctor because of the mind numbingly stupid joke that is our healthcare system is.

Should a person without a car pay for roads?

It's not true. Half of households don't make enough to pay anything in federal income taxes, after all the various credits and deductions. However, they still pay Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes

>roughly the bottom 50% of income earners pay no federal taxes at all.

No federal income tax. They absolutely do pay Medicare and FICA

The estimate this year of nonpayers for federal income tax is closer to 40% and 1/3 of those households are retired people who mostly live on Social Security. Most of the rest are households with low or no income, especially those raising children, or else that have things like short term major business losses or medical bills. It doesn’t particularly make sense for people to be paying income tax in those situations.

Also, most everyone is paying some form of taxes: sales, excise, property, payroll. Those taxes are generally regressive in that they’re a much greater burden for low to moderate income households. Federal taxes offsetting that somewhat is a good thing.

They do. And state and local taxes, which are less progressive. But the major difference between federal income taxes and Medicare/FICA taxes is that they are generally paid back when someone retires.

It's more of a mandatory government savings plan than a tax that goes who knows where.

the employer is the spouse who is working. Not me the tax payer.

Can child free people opt out? No offense but I don't need to pay for anyone's childcare.

Child free people are already taken advantage of, no need to pile more onto us.

They don't care, just want more if you're tax money.

If you're not registering a car or buying gas you're probably not.

God forbid the pittance you pay for income tax in PA goes to something useful instead of cops or some corporate subsidiaries.

>they are generally paid back when someone retires.

That depends how long you live. Wealthier people benefit much more from those puritans because they tend to live longer.

Don’t confuse a deduction with a credit. Child care is deductible (to a rather low limit). It’s not a tax credit.

To keep from alienating people you might want to avoid using words like “our demands.” Just doesn’t sound very good. Talk to people about what you think the government or society should do for working people. Don’t think you can demand anything of anyone else. Get people on your side with good ideas.

The taxes you pay to the state goes to building and maintaining roads. You're definitely paying for the roads.

Penndot is the road state agency, the bulk of their funding comes from gas taxes and federal funding.

Michael Jackson said if you can’t feed your baby then don’t have a baby. Don’t have kids you can’t afford then expect the state to pick up the tab.

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And where do you think that federal funding comes from?

So yeah I hope someone a lot more articulate than you takes up this cause. It’s a good one and there is work to be done, but you are definitely going nowhere. Your entitled attitude will turn off people who agree with you….

Lol this is average redditor 101:

-Post something similar to op.

-Have a bunch of random redditors validate simply based on feels, devoid of any logic or facts.

-Redditors make a comment based on fact/without their "feels" involved.....

-Immediately: "yOu'Re AtTaCKinG MeEeEeee!!" Followed by immediate downvotes all because you're not a part of the hive voice mentality, that is endemic in these Reddit subs.

Lol look at all of the downvotes drxdrg08 got, all because he used facts and logic haha.

For the record, I have kids and yeah I don't think it's fair for you to have to subsidize mine or anyone elses.

thats nice. can i have health care please. i can watch my child so long as i dont die

"I had kids and now I'm entitled to free childcare!!! It's not my responsibility to figure out how it'll be funded or executed!" 🤣🤡

Should go to fixing the potholes

What would be better is if one parent could work and make enough money to support a family so the other one could stay home and care for the kids.

Not that I’m on the universal child care bandwagon, but access to quality and affordable child care, especially for low-income households, actually saves money for all of us in both the short term and long term.

In the short term, when affordable child care is available, families can work and/or go to educational training programs. Employers are more likely to have reliable employees of the employees aren’t worried about where their kid is while they’re at work. Kids in a quality child care learn what they need to start school ready to learn, which means teachers can teach instead of spending time playing catch up (or worse) when kids are in the classroom. Although it’s considered long term, kids who do well in school are more likely to graduate, stay out of the judicial system, and become productive members of society.

As far as long term, the National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs has found that high quality early childhood programs can yield a $4 – $9 dollar return per $1 invested. A 2009 study of Perry Preschool, a high-quality program for 3-5 year olds developed in Michigan in the 1960s, estimated a return to society of between about $7 and $12 for each $1 invested. There are several other studies which demonstrate the return on investment in regards to affordable and accessible child care.

So while child free people might want to opt out, they should probably do so when they’re living on an island by themselves, because access to affordable and quality child care is one of those things where the entire community (and beyond) benefit from it—not just the people using it.

schools and bus systems are already in place, for the life of me, i do not understand why they can’t offer more services (summer, after school daycare, etc) even if they had to charge, it would be way more efficient than bussing kids to alternate day cares for a few extra hours

You don’t think you would benefit from a society that is bettered by kids being properly educated during their critical development years? Or so that moms (& dads) can continue working and contribute to society, instead of choosing to stay home with their kids? You don’t have to have children to benefit from universal childcare; it takes a village.

As a child free person I'm already subsidizing everyone's kids. If you can't afford kids don't have them. I'm fine with taxes supporting free birth control.

That's not true. Social Security is a re-distributive system.

Lower income people get more benefit out of it than they paid into it. In other words, the system skews payments towards the lower end at the expense of the upper end.

I'm already subsidizing everyone's kids. If you can't afford kids don't have them. I'm all for free birth control. Let the free market cause fewer births.

> The estimate this year of nonpayers for federal income tax is closer to 40%

The figure is over 50% any year if you factor in redistribution that happens after taxes. If you pay $3000 in federal taxes but receive $30,000 in Medicaid coverage, SNAP and housing assistance, then that doesn't mean you are a "taxpayer" in the context of paying for new government programs.

I was a single father from the time my son was 8 months old. I was never on government assistance, child support, nor did I have family to help. If you have a child it's your responsibility. I worked 14hrs a day roofing houses to pay child care and pay my bills. No excuses. No handouts If you want to succeed nothing is holding you back. My son is now 20, an officer in the Navy. Suck it up.

How about this: instead of people with kids getting a tax refund, all that money goes to support the children. That way those of us that are child free no longer subsidize you. All that cash can support your schools and eliminating school taxes, feed the kids, give them healthcare, and childcare. People with children get waaaaay too many benefits already. Stop taking my money.

Look, it sounds like a bunch of people who couldn't afford children, had them, and now expect everyone else to pay their way. No.

ETA: I'm child free. I'm willing to have a good faith conversation about this. But you'll have to answer very hard questions about the value of your child to society and their impact on my life and how much of my money you should get.

How about all year school?

The position that people who receive valuable taxpayer services aren’t taxpayers is incredibly disingenuous.

Might as well get it in place before the GOP mandates forced births.

I still have no idea why there isn’t an option for that. The facility and staff are already there, even noneducational daycare would be fairly easy to implement, and be worth the money

It's not a position. It's a simple mathematical fact.

Vastly depends on the school, many do offer some extended year programs for students that need it.

From a more practical perspective it is because teachers contracts specify they get that time off, and because the summer is used for the majority of school renovations, upgrades, and repair.

The last one is a big thing, majority of non emergency projects cannot be done when students are in the building bothe because it distracts students and becuase it may be dangerous. For instance taking the school's power offline to replace a transformer or water offline to replace pipes.

Every summer schools absolutely cram everything they can into those months to get the building ready to go for the next year.

Expect teachers to leave in droves. Summer break is our one perk.

I thought Pennsylvania was stuck in some political deadlock where they couldn’t even pass legislation? Best of luck I guess?

Wasn’t there an initiative a while ago for universal PreK in PA that didn’t materialize? Maybe looking at their efforts or what went wrong would be a good place to start. I think this idea is very noble but I wonder about the practicality and implementation issues. I’m also a librarian and I’ve seen things change since the pandemic. A lot of centers that I visit on my outreach are short staffed because they can’t afford to pay a $15/hr wage. I’ve ran into old daycare workers that now are working in target or elsewhere because it’s just easier and pays more. IIRC Quebec has some sort of universal daycare but I think that’s the only province in Canada to offer it, maybe another place to start looking for models. Good luck

Breeder mentality written all over this. I'm not paying anything extra for you to stay home and collect.

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You just pulled numbers out of your ass. Here's an actual article which gives real numbers. Not your made up fantasy.

https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-child-care-availability-statistics/#:~:text=58%25%20of%20working%20parents%20rely%20on%20child%20care%20centers.,the%20National%20Household%20Education%20Survey.

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This is why I'm a SAHM. I love being with my kids, but also in a very real sense we can't afford for me not to be!

"because I had it rough I want everyone else in my situation to suffer too!"

If I'm lactose intolerant should I campaign to stop subsidizing milk?

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Then no, you shouldn't have to pay.

the horror of having to work an all year like the rest of us

yes you should. we shouldn't be subsidizing corporate profits

I would hardly put universal daycare in the same category as universal healthcare, which is something that I do support.

Did you miss the "one perk" part? It's not like your ass is paying out of pocket to provide supplies to other people's kids

Now you’re either doubling down on disingenuousness or just aren’t familiar with what a “fact” actually is. If I pay $100 a month for house insurance for a year and at the end of that year my house burns down and I’m given $250,000 to rebuild, that doesn’t mean I was never an “insurance payer”. If I donate $10 to my local food bank every few months, then lose my job for a year and get $100s of dollars in food support from the pantry, that doesn’t mean I’m not a donor.

You want me to pay so you don't have to drive around potholes?

It's not that they're charging a ton in an attempt to price gouge. It's really expensive to provide this care and difficult to retain trained staff

Do you think teaching is the only seasonal job? Construction, landscaping, pool stores, etc just don't exist to you??

I can believe the amount of mouth breather conservative haters here, but it's still disappointing. Good on you OP

Teachers get paid garbage in this state and have to put up with the worst people constantly yelling at them.

"Half of all Americans are too poor to pay federal taxes" is not the glowing endorsement of our tax system that you think it is.

That would be ideal…go for 12 weeks with two week breaks in between terms

Oh no. People earning minimum wage aren't paying enough taxes!

Maybe we should fix the income problems in our country?

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yeah, but most teachers have to work a second summer job anyway till they get to the higher end of the pay scale.

"hey, I'm starting up a movement, let's get together and discuss"

"give me all the answers now. Now. NOW!"

"Hey bruh, we literally just started, we don't have all the answers yet. We have some people working on it"

"I pulled a number out my ass that is 10x higher than the real data that exists! Poor people mumble mumble mumble, amirite?"

"lol, k"

And that's your response?

You think OP should just make up phoney numbers like the commenter did, rather than conduct actual research?

Just say you don't care and keep scrolling.

OP did say that they have people doing research. You don't have to have all the answers on day one. Not everyone was born knowing everything. Just some of you.

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As a child free person, I have no problems contributing to efforts that improve our society. There are many taxes I'm opposed to paying or that dont benefit me. A better society is the least of my worries.

I guess you don't think fathers have any responsibility in raising their children.